May 31, 2008

MoJo Staff Picks: May 30

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MojoStaffPicks.gifMusically, we seem to be fixated on indie-pop, classic jazz motifs, and electric music at Mother Jones this week. Here’s what’s on our headphones:

Gary: Ontario’s Broken Social Scene has a knack for sounding melancholy and happy at the same time, a combination I never get tired of. This is a track from their third, self-titled album from 2005. For some reason I like listening to this whole album when riding public transportation.

Gary: I just found out about Thao Nguyen last night, while snooping around my friends’ MysSpace pages. This track is her playing solo, but she’s equally (if not more) interesting with her backup band, The Get Down Stay Down. Her music (with song titles like “Big Kid Table”) is fun, light, tender, and funny. Similar to Feist, but maybe a bit more raw.

Jesse: “Golden Rust” is the opener to Robert Miles’ and Trilok Gurtu’s 2004 album Miles_Gurtu. Miles is an independent producer and musician and Gurtu is an Indian jazz percussionist. This is a great album that plays like one long song that I just never tire of. It incorporates classic jazz motifs, enough to pass with the parents, but is innovative and off-kilter so as to satisfy the more picky young, modern music fan.

Jesse: On the top of my short list of electric music comes Prefuse 73, the alias for one of my favorite music producers Guillermo Scott Herren known for his creative beats and IDM—that’s Intelligent Dance Music. This song, “Point to B,” comes from one of his earlier albums Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives. The entire album pushes boundaries, but I especially enjoy this song for its eclectic vocal mixing. (Hint: Don’t let the early noise distract you, the music develops nicely as the song progresses.)

MoJo Staff Picks: May 30

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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